Sloppy
by Zayz
Summary: T/Z. "You stop it." "Stop what?" "Stop turning me on." Silence. "No, no, stop turning the light on. The light. I meant the light." "Sure you did." –Tony gets a little sloppy. R&R?


A/N: Someone who reviewed a story of mine once remarked that Tony and Ziva would only ever admit their lust for one another if unconscious, drunk out of their minds, or near death. The comment made me laugh, but it also sparked an idea.

I agree with my reviewer; these two would have to be pretty out of it to admit they feel anything. Thus, I present you this drunken mind-trip – though hopefully in a way that is fun, interesting and not too cliché.

Also – thanks a bazillion times over to my epic beta, _Wilhelmina Willoughby_, who just gets it, and gets it right every single time. Thank you, thank you, thank you. This piece would definitely live up to its name without you.

Enjoy!

* * *

**Sloppy  
By: Zayz**

* * *

_Freudian slip_: n. an inadvertent mistake in speech or writing that is thought to reveal a person's unconscious motives, wishes, or attitudes.

* * *

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

The clock above their heads is maddening. The heavy red second hand crawls around and around, echoing in the air and in their heads, a pervasive reminder of the relentless passage of time.

Tick.

Ziva stifles another yawn in the crook of her elbow and drops a clear baggie back into the cardboard box sitting in front of her.

Tock.

Tony tries to stifle a yawn of his own – likely brought on by his body's apparent desire to imitate her yawn – and lets his head rest against the wall behind him.

"Is our budget really so tight that NCIS decided not to spring for a digital clock in here?" he remarks into the silence, glaring up at the offending piece of machinery and yawning yet again.

Ziva's smile is slight but present as she reseals the cardboard box. "Generally, people do not stay in this room for the better part of the day listening to the clock, so I think it is safe to assume sanity was not a consideration when that clock was installed."

"Well, if work demands we stay in here, we have to stay in here, because our sanity is in more danger from Gibbs and his brain-cell-killing head slaps than this clock," Tony points out, internally wincing as he remembers the record five head-slaps he received this afternoon. On impulse, his hand goes to the back of his head, his fingers gingerly massaging the tenderer spots.

"Speaking of work, shouldn't you be over here helping me go through all these evidence bags?" Ziva inquires, her hand on her hip. "That corrupt cop must have headed a hundred cases over the years."

"I wish they had digitized these," he complains. "It would be so much easier if we could look up all this stuff upstairs on the computer."

"It would," Ziva agrees. "But unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of a search engine, so take that box over there and tell me if you find anything."

Tony, however unwillingly, disengages from the wall and opens the box Ziva had indicated. His resigned sigh is audible but she chooses to ignore it. The two work in silence for several minutes, the only sounds in the evidence garage the persistently ticking clock and the rustles and gentle thuds of evidence bags being handled.

It is not long, though, before Ziva, evidently frustrated, asks, "How long do you think we will need to go through all the relevant boxes?"

Tony considers this. "I don't know. Two hours. Maybe three."

He is being generous – after all, they are only two, stuck in here together after a full day of work, any potential plans canceled and any hope of a proper night's sleep dashed – but she doesn't contradict him. Instead, she glances up at the clock.

"Well, it is ten thirty right now," she says. "We are not going to make it through these tonight if we do not call in reinforcements."

"You have reinforcements for a job like this?" Tony raises an interested eyebrow.

"Yes, I do." Ziva grins. "And they are named coffee and take-out."

Tony looks up, something warm and appreciative and genuine infused now into his grin. "You know, I like the way you think."

Ziva clicks her tongue with amusement. "I will be right back."

* * *

Tony finishes two entire boxes in the time it takes Ziva to return to the evidence garage.

"What took you so long?" he demands, dropping the bag he is holding to better whirl around and glare at her. "I've been all alone over here – doing actual _work_, might I add."

"I know." She appears beside him with two large bags emitting intoxicating smells. His glare softens as he peers at them with interest, watching as she sets them down and pulls out two paper plates and two plastic forks.

"What did you get?" He tries to get a glimpse into the bags.

"KFC was the only halfway decent place open at this hour," says Ziva, taking out the box and tilting it to show him. "So I got fried chicken."

"Yum." Tony accepts his paper plate and plastic fork, though his eyes are still fixed on the box of chicken. "Bone in, right?"

"Yes."

"Did you get drinks?" asks Tony.

"I did." She slides one of the bags towards him, smiling slightly at his exuberance. Despite his occasional laziness, she knows that he works hard and she is glad to give him a bit of a break, just for tonight: and besides, there is a certain inexplicable pleasure in making Tony Dinozzo smile like that, a wildly inappropriate pleasure that bubbles in her chest, makes her avert her eyes and let her hair fall in a protective curtain against her cheek, her ears burning.

Fortunately, however, he is too ravenous to notice any of this, thanks to his discovery of a substantially-sized bottle of red wine. His impressed whistle breaks her out of her reverie.

"Well, well, well, what is _this _for, Zee-vah?" he inquires, holding the bottle up and examining it, his stomach tightening like a well-tied bow.

"What do you think it is for?" Ziva's grin is crooked, the light in her eyes dancing strangely against the halogen lights above them. "I figured we could use a…what is the term again? Get-me-up?"

Tony snorts. "Pick-me-up."

"That's it."

"You know, I don't think we're supposed to be getting drunk at work," he points out, torn between intrigue, amusement and anxiety at Gibbs' reaction if they turn up to work even slightly hungover.

"We are also not supposed to stay here after hours so many nights, either," Ziva counters dismissively. "I think we are all right."

Tony's grin, at first a bit guilty for wanting to take up her offer of wine on a work night, brightens with this rationale.

"Sounds good. Got any cups?"

Ziva smirks. "Of course I do."

She pulls two styrofoam cups out of the first bag and he cracks open the bottle of wine. "Cheers," he says merrily, pouring a healthy stream of maroon into each glass and giving one to Ziva.

"Cheers," Ziva returns, as they clank the two cups with a soft thud.

* * *

Once settled comfortably on the floor, Ziva splits the pieces of chicken evenly onto the two plates, handing one to Tony and keeping the other for herself. She also pours them each a second helping of wine once the first is consumed. Tony digs in right away, not bothering with particular neatness because it's just Ziva, just another night working too hard and getting little reward for it besides the late-night dinner.

Ziva, however, chooses to go a little slower; her teeth still inflict the necessary damage upon the meat and the bone beneath it, but she savors it, and chooses to suck for an inordinate amount of time on the bone, her eyes fixed upon the progress of her partner, who chugs down more than his share of the wine and gnaws up his share of the chicken without a second thought.

His hunger is such that it takes him a long time to look up and realize that she's staring at him, those black eyes unwavering from his hazel ones, poised and perfectly still with the bone in her hand, the end of it resting lightly on her lower lip.

"Admiring the view, Agent David?" he teases in a bit of a slur, smiling a large, greasy, fried-chicken smile at her.

"That is one way of putting it," she allows, giving the head of the bone a bite, the minor crunch ringing in the quiet evidence garage.

"You like what you see?"

He chuckles importantly at his own joke while she merely sighs: she has never really gotten drunk with him before, but tonight he is acting exactly as she expected him to – messy, foolish, flirtatious. Sloppy.

He is too earnest for his own good, his easy demeanor too perfectly complimented by the small smear of grease by the corner of his lip, the disheveled state of his hair, the fuzzy joy so obvious in his features: it is this relaxed, childish innocence he possesses at the best of moments that always makes her hesitate before she dismisses him. Internally, Ziva groans at his sweetness, at herself for caring. She clears her throat.

"You have a crumb on your chin," she points out. "There. A little lower."

Tony tries to reach it with his tongue, contorting his features in order to get close, but it doesn't work; he gives up and wipes the crumb off with his sleeve. Ziva wrinkles her nose with disgust.

"There are napkins in the bag," she says, gesturing up at the table.

"Napkins are for squares," he scoffs triumphantly.

She rolls her eyes but keeps her gaze trained on him, sucking on her chicken bone again, her lips enveloping the head in a way that's both delicate and a little vicious. He watches her progress while he chews up the last of the meat on his own bone, his eyes difficult to decipher. Only now, under the spotlight of his suddenly-intense gaze, does the suggestiveness of the scene begin to dawn on her.

"Your turn to enjoy the view?" she inquires with the sole intent of lightening the mood.

"If you could call it enjoying." He cocks his head to the side. "What the hell are you doing to that chicken bone?"

She grins. "What does it matter to you?"

He shakes his head in disbelief; maybe it's the liquor or maybe it's just her, but he finds himself thinking that the way she is still systematically and relentlessly sucking on her nearly-clean chicken bone is both worrying and a little sexy. Her mouth is small, but it is clearly in control of that bone and if the bone were a person, he would be terrified for its life. Her lips and teeth and tongue are more akin to a possessive spider shredding up a fly than a young woman polishing off a chicken bone.

He watches her suck on it for a little while longer before he snaps himself out of it and helps himself to more wine.

* * *

Click.

Ziva looks up from her half-hearted search of the evidence box to find that the world around her has inexplicably gone black.

"Stop that," she grumbles into the dark, unfazed. "It cannot still be funny; you have been at it for more than ten minutes."

Indeed he has. They finished the chicken and the wine more than an hour ago, so she cleaned up and went back to work while Tony, a little too tipsy to focus his attention on a time-consuming task, alternated between helping her look at evidence and playing with the light switches. At present, the latter task holds a deep fascination for him that she cannot decipher.

He still doesn't put the light on, so she taps her foot to a death march, as she has been doing for the past several minutes to threaten him without the ability to glare at him.

It works: Click. The world is right again.

"This is _very _funny, Zee-vah," says Tony, "but you wouldn't know anything about that, since your heart happens to be three sizes too small."

She is almost positive he put the light back on exclusively to deliver his comment with that signature, drunken grin of his.

"Really?" she asks, wrinkling her nose as she tries to figure out which movie that was from.

"Yup."

Click. Blackness again.

However, before he has properly delighted in his game – click – the lights flood back on and take him aback. Because silently, stealthily, Ziva has already arrived at the other set of light switches, her slender arms crossed and her eyebrow cocked in challenge.

"Now stop doing that," she orders, eyes flashing danger.

Click.

"Stop doing what?"

Click.

"_That_!"

Click.

"Then _you _stop it."

Click.

"Stop what?"

Click.

"Stop turning me on."

Silence.

Ziva's finger – lingering so close to the light switch with the intent of clicking it again – freezes in place. Her eyes narrow, her heart skipping a beat the way it does when you skip a step coming down the stairs, and she finds she doesn't want to turn the light on, doesn't want to see him or let him see her.

It takes Tony several long seconds to belatedly realize what he had said; his cheeks flush and all over, his limbs are tight and he is hot with embarrassment.

"No, no, stop turning the _light _on. The _light_. I meant the light."

She gives a low chuckle as – click – she finally flips the lights on again. "Sure you did."

"I did."

"A Freudian slip, then?"

He stiffens a little, still flushed. "_No_. Late-night-exhaustion slip."

"Right."

Clickclickclickclick.

"When you do it that fast, I get dizzy," Tony says, making a face and shielding his eyes.

"You do?"

Clickclickclickclick.

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry. Now stop with the lights."

Ziva's grin is wide and a little bit evil. "Why?"

"I'm getting a headache," he complains.

"Well," she says deliberately, precisely, "maybe I like turning you on."

Silence again.

She leaves the lights on for him, then, and he forgets about the headache brewing at the base of his skull, his shielding hand dropping limp to his side as though attached to a bag of sand. He stares at her for a moment, his jaw loose, his expression unguarded for a moment to reveal his wondrousness, his quiet delight.

And she smirks back, the impish humor not entirely gone from her face but some of it giving way to a soft appraisal of his carelessness, the way the wine melted his guard a little further down than usual tonight. She can take her alcohol much better than he can – she still has the ability to convincingly keep her composure – but he doesn't, he is careless tonight – and she finds herself very, very intrigued.

Until Tony, perhaps remembering suddenly where he is and who he is with, flicks the switch by his index finger and engulfs them back in total darkness.

Click indeed.

But – click – she flicks the switch too and they are back to the light, Ziva's eyes still watchful but now less flirtatious, Tony's smile still goofy but now restrained, the air between them still electrified but no more so than usual. It is only when Ziva exhales that she realizes that for the past minute, she has been holding her breath. She takes a step away from the light switches and takes a breath, determined for normalcy.

"I mean it, Tony," she tells him. "Stop being a child and help me finish up with the boxes."

She walks back to the table with the box and he finally remembers himself; so he clears his throat and sarcastically grumbles, "All right, all right, I'm coming."

And, with his hair rumpled and hanging over his eyes, he does.

* * *

By one thirty AM, Ziva has finally managed to get Tony to finish going through the boxes with her. The evidence bags are back in place and Ziva has noted down what to tell Gibbs later that morning, when they go back to work. _Everything went fine. We found evidence of inappropriately documented evidence that could help us with this case. And nope, we didn't drink wine or act like children on the job. Of course we didn't. That would be unprofessional._ Thus satisfied, she puts on her coat and gets ready to go; Tony, meanwhile, is still playing with the light switches, though the effort is much more half-hearted now, his eyebrows heavy over his moody eyes. He is whistling some song she doesn't know under his breath.

"Tony," she snaps. "We are done here, no thanks to you."

"Hey, hey, _some _thanks to me," he protests, though he stops playing the light switches and goes to grab his own coat. "I caught the corrupted evidence in the Gingham case."

"Out of how many cases did we look at?" she asks.

"Point is, I helped," he says.

"Minimally."

"If you _want _to be so negative," says Tony. "I was the comic relief keeping you going. That has to count for something."

"Actually, it does not."

"Well, I say it does."

She shoots him a look; and though he doesn't answer, he holds his ground, walking next to her as they begin to make their way out of the evidence garage. Ziva lets Tony have the honor of turning off the lights a final time before they leave the evidence garage and the still-ticking clock behind for the night. At first, she walks too fast and he walks too slow, but their paces even out and eventually fall into synch, their shoulders close but not touching, because it would be stupid to maintain distance when they're going in the same direction and there is no one here.

The night is a solid wall of coldness in their faces as they step outside. Unconsciously, Ziva steps a little closer to Tony, who crosses his arms tightly, attempting to shield himself from the weather. He feels Ziva's shoulder bump against his and then stay there, as though trying to glean as much warmth as she can from his body. He lets her, though her closeness is more intimidating than it is comforting considering the effect she is currently having on his more vulnerable state. They walk out to the parking garage together, too cold to talk or do anything besides get where they need to go.

His car is parked closer to the front than hers. He shuffles towards it and pulls his keys out of his pocket.

"Do you want me to drop you to your car?" Tony asks her. "It's freezing."

"Honestly, I do not think you should be driving yourself at all," Ziva declares, the words wisps of white smoke around her mouth. "You have had more than enough to drink."

"Yeah, but I'm fine," Tony insists. "I can drive."

"I do not think that you should."

"Well, then what do you propose?"

"_I_ will drive you home," says Ziva, her amusement palpable and grim, but her delivery strangely mellowed, willing.

Instantly, Tony's irises constrict with fear.

"Please, dear God, Ziva, don't drive me home," he pleads, cringing and backing the front of his car. "I want to keep the chicken _in_ my stomach, if you don't mind."

She rolls her eyes, ignoring the slight, but gives him a critical once-over, her eyes raking him up and down in a way that should be casual, just a partner checking up on her partner's sobriety, but ends up being distinctly uncomfortable.

Mercifully, it doesn't take her long to concede, "All right. You may drive yourself home."

Most of him is thrilled that he doesn't have to put his life at risk, but a part of him is disappointed, somehow. Because she has brought it up, put it out in the open, the thought going from her brain to his brain and becoming a possibility. But now he has refused and now it is no longer a possibility. There is some small tragedy in that, in refusal, in a potentially positive chance never getting to work itself out.

She is not to know that, however; he takes care to nod and give her a sweet half-smile.

"So...I will see you tomorrow?" he asks, strangely raw, tentative.

But his mask isn't as good tonight, with the wine and the lights going on and off; and his expression is sloppy, sloppy like a big Chicago hot dog stuffed up with fillings that ooze out of a bun that is too soggy, too thin, to hold everything inside. And she can see it, see it all the way through him.

And that makes her slip, makes her almost as sloppy as he, her eyes far more affectionate than she would like as they coyly catch his.

"Yes, Tony," she says. "I will see you tomorrow."

The rest of the evening had been pleasant, easy even, despite everything; but it is here, in the parking lot, standing in front of Tony's car in the cold, that the awkwardness finally kicks in and makes this almost too much to bear. She stares at him, the wind blowing her hair out of her face and leaving it exposed, her hands in her pockets; and he stares at her, politely interested but so soft in the eyes, his hands loose and uncovered at his side against the night. It is almost improper, almost outrageous, how suddenly warm and intimate it becomes when they look at each other.

So Ziva is the first to retreat, the first one to give a slight nod and turn around and walk towards her own car; and it is Ziva's retreat that brings Tony back to his senses, again flushing furiously, fumbling for his keys.

He unlocks the car and slips inside, but in his head he can still hear in his head the rhythmic clip-clop of Ziva's boot heels, the relentless tick-tock of the evidence garage clock, the lubb-dupp of his own heart pounding madly against his ribs, all of them exactly, precisely, in time while the rest of his thoughts are mushy. Baffled. Sloppy.

* * *

A/N: And there you have it.

I don't really intend on continuing this, but you never know. If the mood strikes me, I'll add something on, but my mood is fickle and I wouldn't count on it wanting to add something on.

I sincerely hope you will review before you exit out of the browser. I really appreciate those. Otherwise, good-bye and thanks for reading!


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